F-16 - Celeste Zhao – You are the president of Tai Yong Medical, a major company in the bio-modification market; a competitor to Blaise Industries. It was your corporate espionage that allowed you to discover Blaise's discovery before their announcement and organise some ‘help'. Suffice to say, Blaise's discovery would have put you out of the market for sure.

Nobody has a clue that you were the instigator of the attack. You are innocent to investigation. Furthermore, your experience at twisting evidence means that you change 2 lynch results. Ie. Frame or lawyer ‘X is...' the results. The results will appear as normal the next DP though. You must submit this action before I write up the DP end scene.

Finally, you are extremely alluring, charming and so forth. Those who meet you become enamoured to you. For this reason, you are the enamourer. Basically, pick a person at will and you'll be placed in a lover's PM with them for the game. You win with the Mafia.

Medic - Senator Pierre Girard – My charismatic senator, you are a face the public trusts ... which is why the group of defence hawks who were worried about losing a military edge, through augmentation becoming vastly cheaper and more widely available, have you as their public voice. These defence hawks managed to get certain army groups to covertly attack Blaise Industries without their superiors knowing. Nevertheless, your charisma lets you influence public decisions greatly. Therefore, you are the double voter. You win with the Mafia.

Drafterman - Mordred – You are one heck of an augmented, trained military man. People may run to stop you, yet you'll cut them down. For this reason, you are the Slayer – any non-augmented protector who protects somebody you try to kill will be slain as well as your original target. This also applies to multiple non-augmented protectors. You win with the Mafia.

I also gave the Mafia a message with useful information - no 3rd parties, a note about BV's (no name mentioned) win condition, etc.

Town (12)

FT - Ivis Helding – You are Blaise Industries head of security. ‘Brought back' from the gallows by revolutionary surgery given by Blaise Industries, you are now heavily augmented. You are the elite bodyguard - protect a person at night and if an attempt is made on their life you kill the attacker; you are also the brutal cop – investigate a player each night and roleblock them. Note: Your brutal cop powers won't roleblock investigation modifiers, should they exist, on your first check of a person. If you investigate a person a second time your role will act like a brutal piercing cop.. Use one of the mentioned abilities each night. You win with the town.

TV (and FT) - Jerry Alisandros – It's Jerry Alisandros, legendary mass tort lawyer and a big boy with a jet! The Federal Government wanted you to draft a case on why the attackers on Blaise Industries ought to be in prison. You, in all your wisdom, said that they were guilty of trespass! The government was not happy with you for this quackery ...

However, your charm and name helps keep you alive. Every odd NP choose a person to learn the secrets of and threaten to sue them! These people may not vote for you in the DPs, nor can they try and incriminate you or say anything that puts suspicion on you. You win with the town Jerry.

Mod comment: Nobody seems to understand the spirit of mod authority... If I ever use this again the person blackmailing can kill the other person should they wish.

Social - Lord Pryderi – You are the bodyguard, a man of valor, honour and so forth. Protect a person each night – 50% chance of you dying, 50% chance of driving off the attacker if they're attacked. You win with the town.

Royal - Gilgamesh – Your mighty strength makes you bodyguard. Protect a person each night – 50% chance of you dying, 50% chance of driving off the attacker if they're attacked. You win with the town.

Mestari - Colonel Wallace Merill – You will not be intimidated. You stand as firm as the Rock of Gilbraltar when you make a decision. You are the jailkeeper. Each night you can protect and roleblock a person of your choosing. You win with the town.

Modnote: Just a roleblocker.

Xerge / TUF - Albert Hammond – What fine melodies you do play. You are the soothsayer. Each night you can soothe a person – that person will gain a state of mind that prevents them from committing any sort of violent action for 3 NPs (including the NP you use this power). You win with the town.

Modnote: Renders bodyguards inactive as well.

OreEle - True Rolland – A young lady who's big in the fashion industry, you design clothes of a high quality. Unfortunately, some people tend to have rather horrible fashion sense these days, so you're the hated townie. Luckily though, clothes make the man. Each night pick a player to wear your chain's clothing. Whoever is wearing your company's clothing can't appear as other than they normally would' (ie. Counter framers + lawyers, not millers or godfathers) in any capacity. You win with the town.

Modnote: Obviously counters Celeste.

MIG - Ronin Hetgart – A man of the greatest honour and duty to those in need, you are the honourable bodyguard. Once in the game you may protect a player, preventing a kill on that player and killing any attacker. However, this protection will cost you your life, so act wisely Ronin. You win with the town.

Blackvoid - Jet – No, you aren't Jet Pritchard if you were wondering. You're Jet, the charismatic leader of the Purist Resistance! You are the messenger, except the PM you open to a player each night stays open all game. Furthermore, you can't recruit augments and will be told if your attempted recruit was an augment. Due to the Resistance not being brilliantly organised communications are not like a mason with everybody talking to each other; you talk to each recruit individually.

Of course, being the leader of the Purist Resistance you are against ALL augments. For this reason, although you win with the town, you must first fulfil your primary objective – killing all augments. This objective must be fulfilled in order for you to win with the town.

Bluesteel - Darmok – A visionary, a prophetic leader ... not yet discovered of course. You are a vanilla for being able to do practically nothing! However, it is in the 4th night that you, in all your wisdom, can reveal a crucial piece of information about either the Mafia or 3rd parties. However, the discovery of this information comes with a price, one that won't be revealed until you choose to take or forsake the information. You win with the town.

Modnote: 'Price' - had to speak purely in metaphor and other strange things for a DP. See TNG episode 'Darmok' for a greater understanding of what I mean here.

Continued... Don't post quite yet.

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

TUF - Myrddyn Chaucher – You're a lone wolf, a man who works day and night on mapmaking. Indeed, visits tend to irritate you a little. However, it is also a chance for you to chat. You are in effect a self watcher – you will be informed of whom visits you. Also, should a person return to you a second time you will learn whom they have visited on any other nights since their last visit. However, you solitude means that you can't cope with multiple visitors – you will only learn one person's visiting past if multiple people visit you again on the same night. You win with the town.

Detectable - Colleen Karn – You are a ruthless businesswoman who has recently run into some trouble with the authorities for, how shall we put it, ‘indecent conduct', which is to state, fraudulent usage of funds and the like... However, you were able to get out with bail. Unfortunately though you are on a ‘tight lease' and so don't really have the power to do lest you go to jail. Therefore you are a vanilla townie. You win with the town.

Modnote: This was part of what I meant in DP 2...

Modding

Well, although the game itself wasn't so tantalisingly close as previous games, yet very few modding errors were made! The one error was not specifying augmentation to Medic, although it was implied. I felt I was reasonable in attempting to rectify this, and at the end Medic's lynch occurred for other reasons (although my mistake may have been a contributing factor... it happened with DN though!). I was also perhaps a little too explicit in the OPs and DP end scenes, yet that's partially to do with balance.

If there was an issue to do with modding it was that somehow I was hyper-predictable! Somehow the town manages to miss a slew of clues, yet just looks at people like hated townies who counter framer / lawyer and an augmented vanilla as obvious mislynch targets! It began to beggar belief that in this game, a game utilising many never before seen roles and a totally unique game balance, that people were able to supposedly read me! The thing was, the reasoning was often wrong, yet it somehow led to an accurate conclusion...

More on this in game balance.

Game Balance

It must sound insane given that not a single mislynch occurred, but I'm still convinced that this game was fundamentally well balanced! I probably ought to have got rid of the Mafia double voter and increased the Mafia to 4 (16 player game) though to reduce swing. In that case maybe 1 non-augment Mafioso just as a trick. However, that wasn't a big point in the game.

This game had a very interesting design. Unlike my previous investigation heavy games where the reliability of the information was difficult to discern, which promoted behavioural analysis, this game lacked many informative roles, forcing a focus on behavioural analysis. Basically, the town had 1 cop, who doubled as a reliable protector (MIG was 1 shot and the soothsayer was the main protective strongpoint – knock out Slayer and all the bodyguards are effective) , a self watcher who required cooperation to gather evidence (and was a prime target for the slayer to kill bodyguards) and Jet for everything to hunt down the Mafia. However, Jet's evidence was clouded under the veil of his being not strictly town, and perceived as 3rd party. I was hoping for people to think of Jet like a weak serial killer, yet with an easier win target (I think OreEle had this once) . Town could have got a useful piece of information from Bluesteel's role, at the expense of his ability to talk plainly. However, both pieces of information, while totally accurate, implied the existence or non-existence of parties contradictory to what was actually the case! Basically, town was meant to have great difficulty in gathering information.

Add to this a series of mislynch targets (count the protectors...) , plus a slayer role that could, with extreme luck, kill 4 players in 1 night and a double voter, and this game was almost looking Mafia sided. I thought that the enamourer would be nigh on impossible to discover pre-game. These balance issues were countered by the very powerful soothsayer, who could stops a great number of Mafia killed, and was semi-information in a way. Of course though, the soothsayer also made the bodyguards useless, so it was a double edged sword.

Of course, I always consider the story, character names and such to be part of game balance. Bluesteel may have correctly pointed out that this game had some elements from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, yet the town completely missed a whole host of subtle clues. The defective bodyguards all had mythological names* (as did the Slayer, and Myrddyn sort of does), the soothsayer was the name of my favourite musician (I'd used it in previous games) , and there was some background to do with Darmok and Jerry Alisandros. Yes, I did use a lot of source material (highly altered though) that was recognisable. Why? Last game nobody got a single reference I made.

Put simply, I think this game was well and interestingly balanced despite no mislynches occurring, and a few changes could have reduced swing. I know that that sort of statement could be seen as insanity...

*MIG, I chose you over other people in the open sign-ups because of your demeanour and this! How come you never raised the names of the bodyguards as an issue? I was expecting this (DP 1 OP with Gwydion even stated it folks). Obviously, it didn't matter though, and I'm very happy that you played – you bring a nice style and way with words – help maintain a collegial atmosphere.

The Game Itself

DP 1 didn't really go far. I fear we'll never see a mass character claim after Death in Mystere where the cops said ‘Detective X' and so forth... No real leads at this stage. Bluesteel gets town focused on the Deus Ex lead. Mod psychology starts...

NP 1 was, as with every other NP, relatively pro-Mafia. No cop investigation, TUF gets 1 visit and Xerge doesn't soothe anybody (no clue why not) . Mafia does however kill the jailkeeper who was only a roleblocker + one of the people the slayer could kill. So why relatively pro-Mafia? There was nearly no NP lead! The only lead the town had was that Blackvoid knew Medic was an augment, so he was more likely than not Mafia. Of course, Blackvoid isn't 100% reliable...

DP 2 was perhaps the crux of this game. The town quickly discovers that it has next to no leads. It tries to compensate by forcing multiple claims. This DP the Mafia digs itself a number of holes that it spent all game trying to get out of ... yet failed to. Firstly, Medic claims not to be an augment, a fault on his and my part. However, when asked to clarify Medic made a seriously bad fake claim that was totally inconsistent and too similar to his real PM. Secondly, Drafterman claims to be a bodyguard. It might keep him out of the limelight, but it also inserts a Mafioso into the claimed protectors list! Prior to this the protectors were mislynch targets by virtue of their being so many of them. Finally, F-16 concocts a plan to enamour himself to Blackvoid, states it publicly and so forth. He doesn't even want the standard lover's PM background and comes up with ‘helping Blackvoid' and ‘auditor's office' ... which is a horrid idea considering Blackvoid evidently has something against augments. Medic is lynched cleanly and Mafia are in a fix after losing half their voting power.

NP 2 was another good NP for the Mafia. Soothesayer (Xerge needed replacement for an unknown reason) and cop do nothing useful, Blackvoid gets nothing too useful and there's 2 kills (and a fun OP to write). Had FT been on TUF here the game would basically have been over. Didn't happen. F-16 goes ahead with his plan despite my subtle hints to do otherwise. The Mafia is stuck with dangerous claims from here on out.

Continued... (not much left!)

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

DP 3 was interesting. Mafia say the right things given their precarious situation, yet they are found to be supporting each other. A real tour de force (or mistaken mod psychology) on the town's part to not be caught out be the various scummy claims – people like TV, OreEle and such are just ... ignored. F-16 is scared to death and tells me not to extend the DP. I don't, although DN might have been lynched had I done so. No lynch.

NP 3 and the cop investigates the kill, the soothsayer targets a bodyguard, Blackvoid sends another message. Clean kill. Another good NP for the Mafia really. No NP leads...

DP 4 and FT and Blackvoid are suddenly sure of F-16 and Drafter's guilt. Strong playing on their parts really, even though the Mafia haven't played spectacularly. A fun DP with arguments over which Mafioso to lynch, although this wasn't collegial. Almost considered given the Mafia an extra kill for the horrid atmosphere of this DP... anyway, town kills F-16 who pre-emptively lawyered his lynch. Shame, because if he'd been investigated innocent he might have done a bit better.

NP 4 and Mafia kill FT. Nothing else of note really.

DP 5 and everybody is basically sure that Drafter is guilty. Some fun antics here, but Drafter is lynched. People are surprised that the game is over...

Feedback

Okay, not perhaps my best effort. However, let me kindly ask for feedback. I'd particularly like answers to the following:

1. Do you think this game was well balanced? Why / why not?2. Is my modding style getting too predictable? Should I be less creative with roles?3. Did I mod well?4. Was this game enjoyable?

Any other comments are more than welcome – I'll take criticism in my stride and hopefully improve. I'd also be interested to hear the players here voice their preferences for the style of any future Mafia game of mine. What style (of my 3 games) do you prefer?

Finally, let me again extend my thanks to all of you for playing in my game. I know that many of you are time pressed, and committing to this may have been difficult, so I thank you all the more for it. I hope that next time I can create a better game, and perhaps rekindle the joys that came with the success of Death in Mystere.

And so a curtain draws on the Massacre at Blaise Industries

Logic

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

This was a great game! For us townies at least. The mafia probably didnt have as much fun.

Role-wise the game was definently pro-mafia. 2/3 mafiosos had confirmable roles (that are usually town) and town had only 2, plus several mislynch targets. But the town just played too well overall.

It wasn't so much mod psyching Logic specifically as much as it was analyzing the meta in general. Nowadays we expect mods to put in mislynch targets, and we expect confirmable mafia roles. 6 months ago, if Medic had claimed Double Voter, he would have ran through as a confirmed townie. And if Mestari claimed his role, he'd have been lynched because the justification made no sense.

But nowadays, pro-mafia modding has become pretty prevalent, so we're not as quick to make those kinds of assumptions. I mean, its almost gotten to the point where if someone claims a scummy role, they're assumed to be town.

So naturally, we wouldn't fall for OreEle and TV's claim, nor the multiple bodyguards.

The mafia did get kind of unlucky though. If you had to pin their loss on one thing, it wouldn't be any mistakes they made, it would be the issue with Augs/non-Augs. Every Deus Ex villain was an Aug, so I assumed that all the mafia were too. Technically, that logic was incorrect because it turns out, you didn't make it just like the video game. But by chance, the mafia were still all Augs. That info pretty much cleared half the town on DP4.

As to the game itself, I'm not sure why F-16 decided to use his PM role on me. More importantly, he admitted to being an Augment. Why would he do that when the OP makes it clear that I had to exterminate them?

It lead to more than his death too. When he outed my role I lost any chance at killing all the Augs (people wouldn't take my arguments seriously) so I stopped caring about it and focused solely on beating the mafia. That meant no mislynch off DN.

So I'm curious as to why he did that.

Anyway, it was pretty cool scum-hunting with FT, I feel like we did a good job. F-16 actually did a pretty good job defending himself on that DP4, enough to make FT hesitate. He probably could have done even better had we not figured out who the mislynch targets were.

Overall, good game. like I said, the reason it was so one-sided was because town played well, and because the current meta is predictable, not because the game was imbalanced.

First off, there were several reasons the mafia lost not the least of which was that mafia made mistakes. There were a lot of things that didn't work out but the game was actually well-balanced to begin with.

1) Mafia MistakesI made a really complicated fake-claim for a change. My major error was the backstory that I had to help the third party. I also targeted the one person that had an issue with augments. Drafter could have fake-claimed something other than bodyguard. I don't think I realized quick enough that BV had to kill all augments. In any case, I don't really know if we could have gone far enough to win this.

Despite the lack of investigative roles, the fact that BV caught Medic went against us and fact that TUF could confirm Royal did as well.

This was a great effort from Logic and I feel sure that he worked hard to balance the game. I wouldn't say this is an issue with balance but rather that there were plenty of peripheral factors that came into play and made it extremely difficult for the mafia which were quite unforeseen.

2) Skilled TownGood play from BlackVoid, Fourtrouble and Bluesteel. You guys were ridiculously good. As a team, you pretty much zoned in on the mafia and never mislynched. BV played extremely well to prevent the lynches of DNinja and possibly MIG. Had BV not been in the game, I planned to bandwagon on Bluesteel's slight suspicion on MIG but I knew that BV would catch me at it as long as he was alive. Had BV not been there and the DP lasted a little longer, DNinja would have been lynched. However, BV knew that inactive players weren't going to be mafia in Logic's games.I want to congratulate the town for their great instincts. The best townies and our biggest threats were BlackVoid and FourTrouble. They were really difficult to convince and the fact that BlackVoid knew Logic's style off the back of his hand made it impossible to convince him that DNinja was scum. FT zoned in on me and Drafter as well although this was because we killed Bluesteel. FT had great behavioral reads on a whole bunch of players and accurately pinned who the mafia were at the beginning of DP4.With that said, town was also very lucky as the game swung so much that mafia didn't really have a chance.

WHAT DIDN'T WORK OUT WELL FOR MAFIA

1) Medic's augmentationMedic did not claim to be unaugmented because he thought augments were mafia. He simply did not see what Logic wrote on the next line. It is not Logic's fault or Medic's but without a doubt it hurt the mafia.

2) Small mafiaInstead of 4 mafia, there were 3 with a double vote. Once Medic was dead, it took down half the mafia and cut the potency of the mafia influence by half.

The mafia comprised just 3 players out of a grand total of 15. It was also extremely difficult to get a bandwagon going on any townie because mislynches are usually the result of mafia bandwagons. Mafia often make those critical middle votes, i.e. if two townies suspect another townie and there are 7 votes to lynch, 3-4 other mafiosos can pile on to put the townie within 1-2 votes of a hammer after which an inactive would come in, demand a summary and hammer. Such is the nature of the majority of mislynches and that is why on DDO, any well-balanced game should allow for at least a few before MYLO. In this game, it was difficult to secure even 1 mislynch because of the small size and town knowing who the mislynch targets are going to be. We initially needed about 4 mislynches to win which was a big ask in this game.

3) Mislynch possibilitiesThere were no third parties. This minimized the possibilities of mislynches.

Logic did well trying to insert mislynch targets in the game but town caught on to the mod's style very well. For instance Ore_Ele was initially seen as a mislynch target the moment he claimed. Classic Logic style - make a role that has no real purpose. This was before FT claimed brutal cop.

4) Town catching on to mod's styleNow, I love this style. The thing is, we lynched Marauder in Golden Garden for precisely this reason. Why would town make the exact same mistake again?

Drafterman's role was intended to give the mafia multiple kills but that was only good for unaugmented protectors. FT was augmented so there was no getting around it and we had to target people that FT wouldn't protect.

5) Good players as mafiaAlso, only picking good players as mafia - until now I agreed with Logic that mafia need to be comprised of predominantly experienced players. However, this basically confirmed MIG and DNinja and people wouldn't lynch them no matter what! Inactivity is a scum-tell but if the mod is known for only putting active players in the mafia, this auto-confirms the inactive and not so good players. That was the reason that when I mod, I always tend to put either inactive players or relatively new players. This serves the purpose of never auto-confirming them (EVEN if I make mafia comprised predominantly of experienced players.

In fact, in Logic's first game, I used this analysis to confirm Viper but he was lynched regardless. By Logic's second game, people realized that mafia are good players. By the third game, no one would think of any player who is not particularly good as mafia.

6) Similarities to past gameNo one knew who the mafia were going to be in Death-in-Mystere. By the third game, Drafter, medic, and I were pretty much the only good players who played all three games and haven't been mafia yet. If I were town, I would zone in on the three of us. This is why I wanted to kill Mestari first - he was mafia last time. People will know that he is likely not mafia now. Royal's analysis of why I killed Mestari is rubbish. I killed him because he was mafia last time. I wanted to kill Royal too for the exact same reason.

7) Fake-claims given by the modOne last thing - both of Logic's last two games hid the mafia very well and gave them free fake-claims which made it extremely difficult to catch them. This justified the small mafia. The mafia played well in the first one but after that game, town realized any claim could be fake and the second and third games were won by town. We had no fake-claims but still had a small number and no third parties which accelerated the mafia loss.

MAFIA KILL CHOICES

1) Why we killed BlueWe killed Bluesteel because1) We wanted to make DNinja look guilty.2) We also wanted FT to waste his investigation on a dead townie.3) While he was inaccurate in suspecting me for being mafia because I accused Royal, he was still right.

Looking back BV or FT may have been better choices but it would come at the price of Bluesteel being confirmed town.

FINAL COMMENTS

1) Enjoyable theme and OPsThis game was actually fairly well-balanced in theory. Town had barely enough investigatiors and had we killed FT instead of Bluesteel, it would have delayed the town victory. Had Medic not been caught and we killed BlackVoid NP1, DNinja or MIG may well have been lynched. Had they both been mislynced, Medic's power could have ensured a mafia victory. So, balance-wise, this game was well-balanced. However, the things I mentioned swung it extremely in favor of town. I mean, who would have guessed that the one person that BV recruits would be Medic and also that Medic would miss the line about all of us being augments? I mean, I missed it too until Drafter pointed it out to me.

Anyways, thanks for a great game Logic. While some things didn't work out, I really enjoyed the theme and OPs were extremely well-written. It was also great fun being mafia with Drafter and Medic.

"Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights..."

Bluesteel could either have learnt that there were no 3rd parties or that the Mafia had an original voting power of 4, depending on what he chose.

As to the end scene if you won... I'm not entirely sure! I had some stories I really wanted to write, like Ronin's death or your death, but your victory... I'll think on it.

As to the whole meta issues and all, it's funny because I'm the one who dug my own grave! I'm the one who coined the term 'mislynch targets' and have probably had some impact on current trends. Oh well... Next game I'll try to change my style a bit while retaining my own traditonal influences.

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

I have to say, many thanks to Logic for putting together such an interesting game and bringing some great players together to play it out. It was a lot of fun. BV and bluesteel provided some great analysis, as usual, and it was a lot of fun playing on the same side as them yet again. I don't really have much else to say, although I do have one comment about modding in general that I think could have made a huge difference in this game.

I think mods should start randomizing every role. I personally don't enjoy analysis that is based purely on who the mod would make mafia, and in this game, it did become a problem to the point where town didn't want to lynch MIG or DNinja just because Logic wouldn't make them mafia. I try to ignore that kind of mod psychology, which is why I would have happily lynched DNinja, even though I knew on some level that there was no way DNinja was mafia. I wonder how the game would have turned out if the roles had been randomized, and as a suggestion, I recommend it in the future.

Other than that, I don't think there were any problems with this game. The balance was well-thought out, as either side could have won. I think mafia made a couple critical mistakes (which have already been pointed out), but with a little luck and a few different decisions, the game could have gone either way.

The game itself had a lot of enjoyable elements. The OPs were great and gave the game a great feel. I thought the lack of solid investigators was what really made the game, as it forced people to play in the DP and pay more attention to details, instead of relying on a good NP. Since the town never had any results to go on, we had to focus exclusively on our analysis of the meta, in-game behaviors, mod-psychology, as well as individual player psychology. I personally enjoyed that kind of game play a lot more, as it's a lot more fun to lynch someone because two players have caught on to a scum-tell than lynching someone because of a guilty cop result. I hope to see more games in the future with less investigators, and where the few investigators could be more of a hindrance than a help (brutal cops, self-watcher, or other flavors that don't benefit town).

I also really liked a lot of the roles in the game. I particularly like the idea behind TV's role, and I think your suggested variation (where he can kill the players if he chooses) is a great way to potentially fix its short-comings. I also liked BV's role as well. The idea of anti-town win-conditions on a townie made the game more interesting, as well as opening up opportunities for the mafia to make plays. I really liked my role as well, as I had to make a really hard decision each night between investigating/roleblocking or protecting someone and potentially killing mafia.

I was gonna ask for a summary of what happened DP4, but I don't have to read very far to see that FT and BV were killing it with their analysis. Dead on from both of them.

F-16 seemed like a surefire mafioso to me because he kept insisting that vanilla was a cc. It's mafia 101 that there can be as many vanillas in a game as you want. Vanilla isn't a classic role like doctor. I was surprised that he refused to acknowledge this. DN seemed like an obvious mislynch target. And I haven't seen vanilla fake claimed on DDO except once or twice in like a year.

Unlike everyone else, I wouldn't have thought you could predict mafia based on mod psychology. I would have assumed that mafia could include at least one person who is generally inactive. However, logic's mafia would have to have at least two good players. I was watching drafterman from the beginning as a potential target. BV's analysis on how drafterman FOS'ed me too hard for the royal timestamp thing seems dead on. Mafia FOS'ed people for strange reasons in this game. And FT picking up on drafterman being at the bottom of F-16's suspicion list seems quite prophetic, now that we know who was mafia.

I think it's funny that F-16 says he was so disappointed they couldn't make royal into a mislynch target. Royal does tend to make herself into one, regardless of her role. I think her inactivity in this game also contributed greatly to a town win.

inb4 royal flips out: royal, you admit to playing scum-ishly so you're harder to detect as mafia. If you devote more time to appearing pro-town, people will stop bashing you for this. But you need to at least make an effort.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into - Jonathan Swift (paraphrase)

On game balance, which you all now I like to comment on - I find it intellectually interesting - I could have told you before this game that it would be problematic. Simply listing the best-case scenario for the mafia and best-case scenario for the town and saying that the mafia best-case is an easy win: that's insufficient for determining whether a game is balanced. You need to consider the relative probability that the game skews pro-mafia vs. pro-town.

In this game, logic you overestimated how good your mislynch targets were. I've made that mistake before. BV's analysis is dead on - people have come to expect mislynch targets. They don't work at all anymore. Which is good, I think, but it makes mafia's job a lot harder.

In terms of those mislynch targets, Ore_Ele's role was fairly obvious as town given marauder's role in the previous game. *Particularly* because it was Ore_Ele. He didn't play in that game. Had you given that role to drafterman, me, or F-16, people would think we were fake claiming a useless role. You didn't quite think enough steps ahead with that mislynch target. Same goes for tv's role. Given last game was a recycling of the police dynamics, with roles shifted to other alignments, it seemed perfectly in-line with your style to take a 3P role and make it town. No one really commented on my analysis, but if tv's role was mafia, mafia could have won the game by DP4 by making him unlynchable. There were no town killing roles, so you could deduce that tv was non-mafia without mod psych and you could deduce that he wasn't 3P from mod psych. No one wants to run the same game again.

I think all the bodyguards were interesting and TUF's role was a perfect trap (based on how logic played his own role in TUF's game). Brilliant actually. But as you saw, including FT's role in the game negated drafterman's. In fact, it made it so mafia would lose as long as FT was in on the plan.

FT, I'll note once again that you shouldn't broadcast your moves. I think you broadcasting played more a role in my death than anything else. Regardless, cops shouldn't broadcast - it's a smart mafia play to simply kill the investigation target.

Anyways, back to game balance: I could have told you that having 4 mafiosos is better than 3 and a double voter. Mafia needs as much room for error as possible. I've never seen a single mafia that makes zero mistakes, except maybe in my last game that ended super-quickly. Having 4 fake claims and seeing which sticks is better than 3. And since town *knows* that the double voter can end the game a phase earlier, they will account for that in MYLO. Had medic survived, I would have advocated his lynch if we were at MYLO (accounting for his role). Because it's not really a loss as long as he's remotely suspicious, since once he's dead, you're just back at normal MYLO again.

And for the record, I disagree with the analysis that medic's augment confusion didn't lead to his lynch. It definitely did. It brought pressure on him that never left. The initial pressure and distrust gets "anchored" and it's hard to convince people anymore that you're town. It may have been his fault for not reading his role carefully or checking first, but it definitely led to his lynch. I didn't think his claim was horrible, but I didn't buy double voter as town knowing he had lied. Mod interference seems more likely if he was mafia than town as well. Mod's tend not to intervene to save townies from mistakes - that would be unfair.

So I think FT's role and having only 3 mafiosos undoes some of the other mechanics. 4 Mafiosos is also better because psychologically, it's better to have more people "on your side" in the DP. You're more likely to use "group think" to convince the town that you're right.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into - Jonathan Swift (paraphrase)

Let me first state that it's great to have such detailed feedback so far. A few points of my own:

Firstly, I totally grasp the import of the Mafia being predictable when all experienced. However, this normally is a non-issue - everybody was experienced last game. This game, not to slight some players, but there was a certain amount of former players starting to play again. Basically, I didn't adjust this game but I'm hoping this is a non-issue in future with invitations.

Secondly, Bluesteel, your points about psychology and 'group think' are definitely spot on. Normally I'd like to pride myself on somewhat predicting game behaviour, but I really failed this time around. I'll definitely take your advice into account in the future.

One thing about this game was that I had great difficulty filling out the last few roles. Next time I'll hopefully get a co-mod to iron out some the minutae that make a game great.

Thanks to all again for the feedback so far.

"Tis not in mortals to command success
But we"ll do more, Sempronius, we"ll deserve it

Honestly I dont see the issue with there only being 3 mafiosos. Thats how Logic's previous 2 games worked, and they came out fine. The Cult Leader also had 2 revives in Golden Garden, so it was basically 3 vs 14 in that game.

The mafia in this game actually had even more voting power than previously because of the Double Voter. And they could get multiple NK's off Drafter's role. Though there is a reason their numbers were still an issue.

In the first 2 Logic games, the mafia being outnumbered has been compensated by 2 things: being hard to detect (confirmable roles), mislynch targets, and non-mafia roles that kill townies. Examples of that would be the Inquisitor, Drafterman's Survivor role, and TUF's Anton Herzen role which had a 25% chance to kill himself each night.

The first 2 factors played no role in this game, and were the reason why the mafia's low numbers were more of a hindrance. At this point in the meta, we really don't care if you have a confirmable role. And we see through obvious mislynch targets. So F-16 being the messenger and Medic being the double voter had no impact in the town's decision-making.

The third factor was made moot because the role designed to kill townies (mine) was given to someone who prioritized the town's win over individual placement.

So 3 vs 12 can work, the roles just have to be different, because the town is picking up on the current meta. I would be interested to see a game where instead of a bunch of people having scummy roles, everyone has a confirmable role. That would probably be a pretty intense game.

Actually half the reason I don't trust confirmable roles anymore is because of F-16, lol. After all the measures he took to make the mafia in Action Movies look like townies, I was half tempted to make my strategy "screw it...LYNCH ALL CONFIRMABLE ROLES!!!".

Good job BV on catching me early. I wish I could blame it on Logic but I really can't. The mafia pm did say that we were augments, just a couple posts in, so it was my fault for missing it. Sorry Falcon and Drafter.

This was a really fun game. I am surprised FT/TV flipped town, as I was almost sure he was 3rd party based on how Anti-Town his role was.

Anyway, I don't feel like I contributed a ton to the town, and was inactive often. I am hoping to be more active in games during the next couple of weeks, and it is also my goal to engage in more productive activity when I am on my laptop.

The game design seemed to work well, and Logic was a great mod.

I would give this game an 8/10, which is a good rating for me, and I would say makes my top 20 list.